“Everything I’ve ever taught in terms of self-help boils down to this — if something feels really good for you, you might want to do it. And if it feels really horrible, you might want to consider not doing it. Thank you, give me my $150.”

Coaching includes two broad categories. There are executive and leadership coaches — they train people to be better at business — and life coaches, like Ms. Beck, who talk about leadership in one’s own life, from the home to the office and everywhere in between. There is often tension between the two, with executive coaches tending to disdain the sometimes exuberant spiritual sides of life coaches.

The idea that we should be better — more effective, more efficient, happier — is a vein that runs deep in American culture, from Norman Vincent Peale to Tony Robbins

Misconceptions about Happiness
September 2014
Greater Good Science Center

Happiness comes from a lot of different things.
For different people, different practices, different pieces of knowledge
are going to contribute more impactful or less impactful ways. This is an idea that
Sonja Lyubormirsky from UC Riverside calls fit.

Love at Goon Park: Harry Harlow and the Science of Affection
N Engl J Med 2003; 348:670-671February 13, 2003http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM200302133480724
Harlow showed that monkeys could learn to disassemble a complex puzzle without the reward of food as easily as they could with the reward — a result inconsistent with the commonly assumed primacy of drive reduction in learning.

14:56
The psychological immune system works best when we are totally stuck, when we are trapped. This is the difference between dating and marriage. You go out on a date with a guy, and he picks his nose; you don’t go out on another date. You’re married to a guy and he picks his nose? He has a heart of gold. Don’t touch the fruitcake!
You find a way to be happy with what’s happened.

20:12
We should have preferences that lead us into one future over another. But when those preferences drive us too hard and too fast because we have overrated the difference between these futures, we are at risk.When our ambition is bounded, it leads us to work joyfully. When our ambition is unbounded, it leads us to lie, to cheat, to steal, to hurt others, to sacrifice things of real value.When our fears are bounded, we’re prudent, we’re cautious, we’re thoughtful. When our fears are unbounded and overblown, we’re reckless, and we’re cowardly.

related:

The way we’re working isn’t working: Tony Schwartz at TEDxMidwest
TEDx Talks
June 26, 2012